English

How Euler would compute the Euler-Poincar\'e characteristic of a Lie superalgebra

K-Theory and Homology 2012-01-30 v3 Classical Analysis and ODEs Rings and Algebras

Abstract

The Euler-Poincar\'e characteristic of a finite-dimensional Lie algebra vanishes. If we want to extend this result to Lie superalgebras, we should deal with infinite sums. We observe that a suitable method of summation, which goes back to Euler, allows to do that, to a certain degree. The mathematics behind it is simple, we just glue the pieces of elementary homological algebra, first-year calculus and pedestrian combinatorics together, and present them in a (hopefully) coherent manner.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0812.2255,
  title  = {How Euler would compute the Euler-Poincar\'e characteristic of a Lie superalgebra},
  author = {Pasha Zusmanovich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0812.2255},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

v3: minor English corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:51:06.158Z